Tim McGee

• 

  Constructal Theory: 5 Designs Shaping the Future of Sustainable Engineering

  photo Jenny Downing@Flickr What Is Constructal Design and Can It Save The World? Take a look at a leaf, like the one above. Notice the elegant branching pattern of the veins. This is a constructal design. If you were to look at a river from an airplane,

• 

  Land Degradation Endangers Quarter of World Population

  Land degradation is the decline in soil, water, and vegetation quality - the very things we depend on for life. For the first time scientists have used satellite pictures and GIS software to assess the degradation of land

• 

  How Science Really Works: The Interactive Flow Chart

  We make a big deal on TreeHugger about citizen science, the idea that everyone can be involved in significant scientific work. We talk about evolution and its place in environmentalism. We

• 

  Crop Biodiversity A Cure for Ocean Dead Zones?

  Biodiversity is the variation of life within any system. High biodiversity is a trademark of ecosystems that are healthy, resilient to stress, and those that provide valuable ecosystem services like clean air, water, or food.

• 

  Fuel Made by Sun, Water, Carbon Dioxide, and Nanotechnology

  Trees use sunlight to forge carbon dioxide and water into a useful fuel. It is an elegantly simple strategy, using renewable energy and common non-toxic elements that has worked for millions of years. Why don’t we do the same thing,

• 

  Computer Model Shows How Landscape Architecture Can Fight Malaria

  Malaria kills. It kills people, economies, and has inflicted untold pain and suffering throughout human history. Today malaria accounts for one third of all deaths worldwide for children under 5, and the vast majority in

• 

  Knowledge Gap of How We 'Fit In' is Greatest Threat to Environment

  We know that trees can increase the thickness of clouds with terpenes, and lizards can drink water from wet sand with their feet, but we have very little understanding of how we fit into the environment and how the environment

• 

  Moving Up: Climate Change Forces Species to Higher Elevations

  Mount Kinabalu on the island of Borneo is a major center of biodiversity. The large range of elevation creates unique habitat conditions from lower to higher elevations, leading to a rich diversity of life. In 1965 three

• 

  Leggy Fence Lizards Show Rapid Evolution

  The world is a rapidly changing place these days, and one strategy to deal with change is to evolve. In the southeastern United States our native fence lizards are evolving… into a

• 

  Harnessing Molecular Motors: Nanotechnology and Biology Meet to Redefine 'Lab on a Chip'

  If the electric Mini can have motors in its wheels why can't science geeks get molecular motors in their labs? After graduating college I spent a good three years of my life moving small volumes of fluid from one tube to another,

• 

  Agriculture Sustainability Metrics Need Work: Can You Help?

  How important is sustainable agriculture? It is expected that by 2050 the world's population will need a doubling of agriculture productivity. Can we meet this demand without destroying the systems we depend on for life? Are

• 

  Wildlife Land Management Needs Sustainable Vision to Control Disease Outbreaks

  Where do the Buffalo Roam? Is a question many in the West are trying to answer. Wild herds of American Bison (commonly called Buffalo), once roamed the great plains in the tens of millions as part of a complex, sustainable and highly productive

• 

  MIT Solar Concentrator Improves Solar Cell Efficiency and Design Options

  MIT Solar Concentrator Innovation: More Bang for your Buck Solar concentrators do what you might expect, concentrate solar light. Usually they are large mirrors or other devices, but the

• 

  6 Extreme Weather Projections for the U.S.

  Extreme Weather More Common 500-year floods and microbursts have only recently entered my vocabulary. Extreme weather events have entered our national consciousness, altered our landscape, and are currently changing our thinking about global warming.

• 

  Glass Breakthrough May Lead to New Sustainable Materials

  Photo by Duke LeNoir via flickr Glass is a Molecular Traffic Jam Is glass a liquid or a solid? An article published today in Nature Materials provides evidence that glass is actually more like a 'traffic jam'. It turns out the atoms in a glassy solid

• 

  Research Shows that Research Contributes to Global Warming

  The average Canadian produces 22 tones of carbon dioxide each year - equal to the weight of about 4 large elephants. Doesn't everyone measure carbon dioxide in elephants? One of those Canadians happens to be biochemistry professor Hervé Philippe from

• 

  Book Review: Trading Paces

  Michael Kelly is an Irishman looking for what really matters. Trading Paces follows his path from a high paid job in IT sales, to a low paid job in freelance writing. Along the way, he finds himself falling in love with a life filled with vegetables,

• 

  Native Seeds Fight Food Shortage and Global Warming

  A perfect storm of research and technology has emerged that when taken together may provide part of a solution to food production and global warming. The key ideas are: